A Lithuanian architect and former theme park worker, has designed a chilling roller coaster concept to thrill passengers – and kill them.
Dubbed the ‘Euthanasia Coaster’, the morbid design by Julijonas Urbonas, “humanely, with elegance and euphoria, takes the life of a human being” by travelling at 100m/s and lifting the passenger up to a height of more than 1,600ft.
During the three-minute ride, passengers are spun and flung into hoops at 223m/h.
The ride would cause the brain to die from cerebral hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, after experiencing the deadly spins and turns of the track.
“Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful,” explains Urbonas in the video interview.
“Celebrating the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this 'kinetic sculpture' is in fact the ultimate roller coaster,” adds Urbonas.
‘The ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead.”
Talking about his creation is much more than just ‘death’, Urbonas explains: “There is no special ritual, nor is death given special meaning except that of the legal procedures and psychological preparation. It is like death is divorced from our cultural life.
“But if it is already legal, why not to make it more meaningful?”
Dr Peter Saunders from Care Not Killing told the Daily Mail: ‘Whilst appreciating the artist’s sense of humour and light-heartedness, we also need to remember that the life a human being cannot ever be taken ‘humanely with elegance and euphoria’ and with this method the last sensation would more probably be one of overwhelming vertigo and fright.
"Euthanasia rightly remains illegal because any law allowing it could so easily be abused.
"Vulnerable people - the sick, elderly, disabled or depressed - would feel under pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death.
"Let’s hope that this imaginative method never becomes legal."
Leading pro-Euthanasia charity, Dignity In Dying, declined to comment.
